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 Home? Pacific or Suez?" The Telegraph Express showed, among the earliest departures, a German Lloyd for Nagasaki and an Apcar for Singapore. "Toss for it," he decided. "Heads Lloyd, tails Apcar. "And Fortune, once more pouncing down into the game, rang the Mexican dollar on the table, tails up.

On an April evening in Singapore, he had gone to a ball at the Tanglin Club, where a somewhat fagged company were dancing away the humid hours. Tired of the crowding couples, the lights, the music, the labour of this clammy tropical pastime, Owen was heading for the card-tables, when a friend seized and bore him back:

"No you don't … come along … present you … compatriot of yours … Miss Holborow—"

Among the pale and jaded residents she shone out a breezy, tanned seafarer.